Enabling Apple's Aqua window manager for X11

Jan 10, '03 08:59:17AM

Contributed by: bjackson

I installed the Apple X11 system that was released today and found that it comes with a neat window manager called aqua-wm.

I had a previous version of X11 installed, so this hint might not apply to virgin installs (i.e.; aqua-wm might be your default window manager already) [Editor's note: Yes, fresh installs default to the Aqua window manager.]

For those that might have had other window managers installed from a previous X11 install, or just want to know how to change window managers, do the following:

Open a terminal session. In your home directory, copy the hidden file .xinitrc to .xinitrc.save, then edit .xinitrc with vi or your favorite text editor.

 % cp .xinitrc .xinitrc.save
% vi .xinitrc
At the bottom of the file, you'll see the following:
 # start some nice programs

twm &
xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 &
xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 &
# exec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login
Remove the line 'twm &' and add the following in its place:
 /usr/X11R6/bin/quartz-wm &
Now when you start X11, you'll get the nifty aqua-wm which will minimize to the dock, have the title bars like Aqua, etc. You can add and delete the other lines in the .xinitrc file to not start the clock and xterms, or start other items instead.

[Editor's note: I thought I had installed over an old XFree86 install, but perhaps I had deleted my .xinitrc first, as I definitely got aqua-wm on my first X11 launch.]

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